Is Anchorage’s Town Square Park worth saving? Are voters ready to lift the tax cap to pay for it?

It’s a hangout for the vagrants and downtown drug pushers. It’s the scene of stabbings, shootings, violent crime, and piles of human waste.

Now, the mayor and the Anchorage Assembly want voters in April to approve an $8.5 million bond measure, which property taxpayers will have to pay for, and the biggest part of the expenditure is to make Town Square Park a prettier drug hang out, with no plan to make it safer.

Proposition 3 on the April 1 ballot is no joke. It asks voters to approve:

“For the purpose of renovating and rehabilitating trails and parks, and making improvements at various parks and recreational facilities in the Anchorage Parks and Recreation Service Area, as provided in AO 2025‑10, shall Anchorage borrow money and issue up to $8,250,000 in principal amount of general obligation bonds and increase the municipal tax cap by an annual amount not to exceed $245,000 to pay for associated annual operations and maintenance costs?” 

For this bond, it’s estimated to cost property owners $4 a year for an average home, plus an extra $2-plus-change per year to maintain and operate the park. The debt would be retired by real and personal property tax collected within the Anchorage Parks and Recreation Service Area, without cost to properties in Chugiak, Eagle River, Girdwood, and others outside the service area.

Voters in Anchorage have a history of approving such seemingly small increments year after year.

The bond has something for everyone but the biggest expenditure by far is Town Square Park, at $2.9 million.

Whether making Town Square Park a prettier place for violent vagrants will improve downtown is a question voters will need to ask themselves. Mayor Suzanne LaFrance says it will. Assembly members from downtown Chris Constant and Daniel Holland say it will make the open space more attractive for people to use.

Town Square Park was created in 1984 through a citizen led voter initiative, intended to be “an oasis from the urban environment of Alaska’s largest city.” It has evolved into a gathering place for only those who dare.

Proposition 3 will be before voters in the ballot packet that will be mailed in about one month. The election ends on April Fools Day.